The Inequality Times

After announcing in the Public Editor column that the metro section would place "a new focus on inequality," the Times is off to the races.

Sunday brought a news article headlined "Life on $7.25 an Hour." An astute Smartertimes reader-participant-community member-watchdog-content co-creator pointed out, however, "the article's main character, Eduardo Shoy, doesn't actually make $7.25/hour as in the article's penultimate paragraph it notes that, 'On a good day [he] can make up to $75 in tips.'"

So the guy the Times focuses on for its article on "life on $7.25 an hour" actually makes $7.25 an hour plus up to $75 a day in tips, plus, the article reports, an additional fee of $1.20 per delivery "to help defray his fuel costs." And that work is a second job — he also works for $13 an hour as a forklift operator at Kennedy airport. The guy owns a house in New York City that he bought in 2003 for what the Times says was "more than $500,000" — it doesn't give the exact amount, or say what the house is worth now or how large the mortgage is on it. It says his expenses include "his children's car insurance premiums" (the children are 19 and 22).

If "life on $7.25 an hour" includes three cars and a New York City residence worth more than half a million dollars, the Times' "new focus on inequality" may not be making exactly the point it set out to make, because by global standards, Mr. Shoy is rich.

Today's installment in the inequality focus is the debut of a new column, The Working Life:

She walks with the confidence of the successful professional she once was, the corporate manager with the office overlooking Times Square, the six-figure salary and those late-night glides back to Staten Island in that sleek company car.

Look closer, though, and you'll notice the peeling paint on her front porch, the crumbling chimney, the dilapidated garage, the telltale signs of a downsized life.

Ms. Scarino has been laid off twice, "discarded," as she puts it. Her husband, a project manager at an architectural firm, lost his job, too. His only alternative paid 20 percent less.

"That world, that security we had, is gone," said Ms. Scarino, 62, who says she and her husband burned through their savings to stay afloat.

This is life in New York City, four years after the Great Recession officially ended. Ms. Scarino, who lost her job at a law firm in 2009, spent two years hunting for work before another law firm hired her in 2011. In March, she was laid off again.

The Times metro section as propagandist for the de Blasio administration's grim class warfare focus is off to quite a start.